February 24, 2008

The Day Mainstream Media Died

Hey, PR people, where were you when the mainstream media died?
Apparently it happened back in 2004 and few noticed -- except for those
of us in the social media space who have been singing "bye-bye Miss
American pie" for quite a while now.

Many social media folks
feel that blogs became a real threat to mainstream media during the
2004
presidential race. But now there’s a great new study that
corroborates this called Every Blog Has Its Day.
This study by three different universities analyzes the data collected
during the 2004 blogging surge and guess what? If the findings are
correct, then blogs now have more credibility than all other forms of
media.

To quote from the study:

"The perceived credibility of blogs is
significantly higher than the perceived credibility of any other
traditional and online media."

That's
right, blogs have more credibility than traditional newspapers and
online newspapers. Moreover, blogs are now more credible than
traditional television news, online television, traditional cable TV
news and online cable television news.

The "good old boys
drinkin' whiskey and rye" in MSM board rooms haven't yet realized the
particular day that they died. But from the lack of intrepid reporting
in the lead-up to the Iraq War, to ever-increasing layoffs in the news industry, to this nasty lack of journalistic standards,
it's pretty apparent that is not life we're witnessing---just the
spasms of rigor mortis. Is it any wonder that corporate advertisers are
pulling advertising life support from traditional media and going
online? (Growth is nine times traditional ad spending according to this.)

Need more convincing?

Did you catch Marc Andreessen's launch of the New York Times Death Watch? He told Fortune
that if he were running the Times he would "Kill the print product
immediately and deliver the base line of news online only. 'Take acute
pain now in order to avoid years of chronic pain,' he says. "Basic rule
of thumb: Be on offense, not on defense." The offense he recommends is
immediately bolting social media features onto the Times' online site.